UK organizations were hit by far fewer cyber-attacks in February than the global average, but the year-on-year (YoY) increase was nearly four times the growth rate worldwide, according to Check Point.

The security vendor’s February 2026 Global Threat Intelligence report revealed that it blocked an average of 2086 cyber-attacks per organization per week globally, a 9.8% year-on-year (YoY) increase. In the UK, the figure was only 1504 per week, but that represented a 36% YoY increase.

Education, energy & utilities, government, healthcare and financial services were among the most frequently targeted sectors in the UK.

Ian Porteous, regional director for security engineering (UK&I) at Check Point, told Infosecurity that it’s hard to pinpoint a specific driver of the spike in UK attacks.

“We have seen a general trend in recent years of regression towards the mean in the number of attacks. In the past Europe and North America were much lower compared to other regions and have since ‘closed the gap’ to some extent),” he said.

“However, we do see a variation also inside these regions, and it might be impacted in some cases by short term and large-scale campaigns."

Read more on UK cyber threats: UK Executives Warn They May Not Survive a Major Cyber-Attack, Vodafone Survey Finds.

Ransomware continues to be among the most acute threats facing UK and global organizations. While most corporate victims (51%) were from the US last month, the UK (3%) came in third, behind Canada (6%).

The report pointed to 49 discrete ransomware groups operating last month, with Qilin (15%), Clop (13%), and The Gentlemen (11%) accounting for a plurality of victims.

Overall, the UK fared far better in terms of attack volumes versus the global average and also regionally, compared to Latin America (3123), APAC followed (3040) and Africa (2993).

GenAI Drives Data Exposure Risks

Check Point also revealed that widespread generative AI (GenAI) use in corporate environments continues to fuel the risk of unintended data leaks.

Globally, one in every 31 GenAI prompts posed a high risk of data exposure last month, impacting 88% of organizations that use these tools regularly, it claimed. A further 16% of prompts contained potentially sensitive information like credentials, customer data and IP.

The security vendor claimed that, because organizations used an average of 11 different GenAI tools in February, it’s likely that many of them were not actively managed by IT or governed by dedicated policies.

With the average user generating 62 prompts per month, there’s a growing likelihood of something going wrong.

Harmonic Security research from last year found that one in 12 British and American employees use Chinese generative AI (GenAI) tools, potentially compounding these security risks.

Data inputted into these models via prompts may be shared with the authorities in Beijing. And tools like DeepSeek have been found to be vulnerable to jailbreaking, hallucinations, and generating insecure code.

Check Point UK & Ireland regional director, Mark Weir, said that despite a sharp uptick in attacks on UK organizations, cyber risk should be viewed as a persistent threat.

“Even when ransomware activity fluctuates, attackers maintain constant pressure across industries and regions,” he argued. “At the same time, unmanaged GenAI usage continues to introduce new data exposure risks. Prevention‑first, real‑time protection powered by AI remains the most effective way to stop attacks before they cause operational or financial damage.”